Education, From The Capitol To The Classroom

Stories about students: How does education policy affect the way students learn and grow? Can schools meet their needs as they balance ramped-up testing with personal changes and busy schedules? And are students who need help getting it?

Stories about educators: How are those responsible for implementing education policy in schools − from classroom teachers, to district administrators, to school board members − affected by changes at the top? And how well do they meet their challenge of reaching students with varying abilities and needs?

Stories about school assessment: With an increased push for 'accountability' in schools, what can test scores tell us about teacher effectiveness and student learning − and what can't they tell us? What does the data say about how schools at all levels are performing?

Stories about government influence: Who are the people and groups most instrumental in crafting education policy? What are their priorities and agendas? And how do they work together when they disagree?

Stories about money: How do local, state, and federal governments pay to support the education policies they craft? How do direct costs of going to school − from textbooks to tuition − hit a parent or student's bottom line? And how do changing budgets and funding formulas affect learning and teaching?

When Schools Lose Days To Snow, Is Making Up Lost Time An Adequate Substitute?

February 10, 2014 | 11:12 AM

The first snowpack of the winter on the front lawn of Indianapolis' Washington High School in 2012.

Compared to last year, harsh winter weather has prompted Indiana districts to cancel or delay classes on more than twice as many days this school year, if an analysis by our colleagues at WTIU News is any indication.

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“You have to make the best with what we have and use your best common sense moving forward,” board member Brad Oliver tells StateImpact. “I don’t know that it would be reasonable to keep tacking days on and pushing [the end of the school year] back further and further.”

The trouble with researching whether lengthening school days can make up for lost learning time?

“Most schools that have lengthened time for student learning have not done so in isolation, but as part of a larger reform effort,” SEDL researchers Stacey Joyner and Concepcion Molina write. “This makes it difficult or impossible to isolate the effects of extending the school day or school year on student achievement.”

But despite a lack of evidence that longer school days cause greater student learning gains, a Wallace Foundation analysis found there is at least evidence of a correlation between longer school days and learning gains.

A National Academy of Education white paper says longer school days can have “powerful” impacts on student learning if packaged with effective strategies for improving student learning. But, the authors conclude, “simply adding minutes to the time spent in class” is less effective in isolation.

“In fact, researchers have found that every 10 percent increase in school time can be expected to produce only a 2 percent increase in learning,” the paper reads.

But, of course, Indiana’s circumstance differs from the scenarios these researchers are discussing. Schools wouldn’t be appending additional days to the school year, they’d be trying to make up for lost time.

State superintendent Glenda Ritz says school leaders would have to apply for waivers from Indiana guidelines that prevent them from making up snow days hour by hour. She says she’ll entertain these waivers because she wants to give schools enough flexibility to prepare students for upcoming ISTEP+ exams.

“I’m sure that’s going to be at the top of their lists. If we add time, how is it going to be added so we get the benefit we need so it’s preparing the kids?” Ritz told State Board members during last week’s meeting.

Ritz says local school boards would have to approve changes to district calendars.

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Comments

Karynb9

How is this “add a little time to each day” working at the secondary level? If you add ten minutes to each class, is that really enough to get through five days’ worth of missed lessons? Can you cover the five missed lessons in geometry with those extra ten minutes a day (“Do all of the problems on page 134…and four of the problems on page 135″), or do a couple of the 45-minute-long chemistry experiments that were missed (“We’ll do 1.2 different experiments today, kids”)? I think that adding minutes to the day will be doing nothing more than giving kids back their full summer vacation — I don’t think you’re actually replacing the content from the missed days. There is more flexibility at the elementary level, but at the secondary level when lessons are divided in such clear blocks of time because of a set bell schedule, I don’t think this is going to be an adequate way to make up content that was missed. Of course, kids in high school don’t take ISTEP, so who cares, right?